Steven Latimer

Today, the great American poet -- among other things -- John Updike died of lung cancer at age 76.

I'm sure he was a great poet, as evidenced by his name being a household commodity among the literary literate. But it's unfortunate that the only memory I have of studying Updike in the schools was when in Dave Lilley's IB English class at Warwick High School we couldn't help but snicker at the name "Updike" when we were analyzing one of his poems. I wonder if Mr. Lilley had thought his students might act inappropriately at the name before he selected Updike's work.

We were teenage boys. It's exusable.

Updike.

Thanks are due to George W. Bush for commuting the sentences of former US Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean. The president's commutation occured earlier today.

While the commutation is welcome, and long overdue, it should not overshadow President Bush's well-meant, yet misguided immigration policy. Bush did the just, compassionate thing today, but why the wait?

Said former Congressman Duncan Hunter at the 15 May 2007 Republican Party presidential debate in Columbia, South Carolina (seems so long ago):

I wrote the bill that the president signed in October that takes the San Diego fence 854 miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and it's mandatory. I called up the other day, and they've done two miles of border fence.

This administration has a case of the slows on border enforcement. If we have border enforcement, we will be able at that point to start to regulate the internal problem that we've got. Because as long as you've got a revolving door and you have no border -- and this 2,000-mile porous border, incidentally, is our biggest homeland security problem; it's not just an immigration problem, it's a homeland security problem -- we need to build the border fence. We need to have a Border Patrol which is big enough to get the job done, and we need to be able to ask people when they want to come into America, knock on the front door, because the back door is going to be closed.

Hunter's words ring true today.

Back in September 2008 I predicted that the San Diego Chargers would be the winners of Super Bowl XLIII. It wasn't meant to be. Today, the Chargers lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and thus have been eliminated from the NFL playoffs. Therefore, it is impossible for San Diego to be the winners of Super Bowl XLIII. Furthermore, Seattle won't be in the Super Bowl, either: they didn't even make the playoffs.

Or in the beholder's eye.

Depending how you "look" at it. Pun intended! Anyhoo, my friend (and one-time political mentor) Tyler Bass posted an AP news story to his Facebook profile about a Texas death row inmate who has eaten his only good eye.

When I initially read the headline, I had to do a double take. This is the sort of stuff you would expect to read about in The Onion.

Let me conclude by saying that I dare not ask what this incarcerated gent had for dessert!